“There’s no chalice stone,” I reminded him.
“No, but Quiric said something about Solomon’s Stone, right?”
“It’s destroyed,” I said. “It doesn’t exist.”
“Maybe Lilith doesn’t know that,” Eric said.
“Or maybe she has another plan,” I countered.
“Do you want to hear about the partial inhabitation or not?” Eddie asked, glaring at us in turn.
“Yes,” I said, shooting Eric a sideways glance. “Very much.”
“I was in Europe,” he began, “and I met another rogue hunter. Apparently, he was on the run. He’d managed to reverse a demonic ritual to bring some High Demons over from a hell dimension. They got here, and he sent them right back packing. I don’t know the details. At this point, the guy had pretty much lost it.”
“Well, that sounds promising,” Eric said.
Eddie shot him a scowl, and Eric cleared his throat, then said, “Please keep going. What happened with the rogue?”
“Like I said, he reversed the ritual, and was feeling pretty smug.”
“But?”
“But one stayed behind,” Eddie said. “My friend didn’t realize until later, of course. But somehow he learned that the High Demon had left a piece of itself behind.”
“That’s all you know?” Eric said. “Unless you have more details, that’s useless.”
“Steady on, boy. That’s not all. He killed the host—and the High Demon was gone.Poofgone. Not popped into another body gone. But gone back to the source demon. So once you find this host, all you have to do is kill it.”
“Well, that’s good news,” I said. “But how do we know the host didn’t have to be complicit. High Demons can totally share with a human if they find one to time-share. Although, then they have to fight the human’s will.”
“I think you just answered that question yourself, girlie.”
I looked at Eric, confused, then saw realization strike his face. “They didn’t move into living flesh. They moved into another demon.”
“But that makes no sense,” I said. “Regular demons move into dead humans as a matter of course. High Demons can do it, too, but they can’t stay long. They’d just burn through the body. Maybe doing it partially changes that, but then they reduce their power, right?”
“Maybe sometimes it’s worth it,” Eric said.
“Like when you’re thinking there might be a human body who can host a High Demon even without consent. Because then you use a ritual like the one with the chalice stone, and the complete High Demon swoops in to take over that special human’s body.”
“A human like Allie,” he said.
“Eric…”
He nodded. “I know.”
“How are we going to find this bit of Lilith? She could be in any demon anywhere.”
“No,” Eric said. “She’d want to stay close to us. Especially since she needs Allie.”
“So this demon she’s in will be holed up wherever Allie is hidden.”
“Possibly. Unless she doesn’t have full autonomy. It’s only a piece of her. What if the host doesn’t even know?”
“No,” I said. “We don’t have time for more questions. We need answers. We need to know—Oh.” I looked at them both.“I may be wrong, but unless you have a better idea, I know the perfect host. Someone we’d never even think of. And someone our students are with right now. Eric,” I said. “We need to go.”
“Quiric,” Eric said. “Oh, hell.”
